That rail wobbled when he clutched it, the brass-colored bracket that held it to the wall being fastened with a screw whose anchor was losing its grip. As he grasped round the diameter of the rail his fingers touched something wet and sticky on the bottom. Likely it had, whatever it was, been there for a while, discovered only now due to the odd angle of Rudd’s seated grasp. He wondered what it was, but he didn’t pull away though he realized that would be the correct response. It was a mere detail. Gross. Press harder: it oozed from beneath the pads of his fingers.

The brass-colored handrail bracket on the bottom didn’t wobble. This was the stairway from the back of Tony’s dining room to dry-storage. The paint was cracked and chipped in places. It was splattered with at least three different colors of liquids: grease, tomato sauce, and something yellow. There were more than seven steps; he knew because he and Fenton had made a bet on it some days before. The handrail was walnut stained but almost black in places. There used to be a bare bulb in a ceiling-mounted socket at the bottom of the steps, but now it was a fluorescent ring that was intended as a more economical screw-in replacement for the bulb. The fluorescent ring always took a bit too long to reach its maximum brightness, so the switch was set in the on position by a piece of masking tape, which was pretty much beat to shit because everyone kept trying to turn it off without looking. Writing on the masking tape said DO NOT TURN OFF; then in a darker black that must have been added later it demanded PLEASE!!! The light was always off now because all the lights were off because the power had gone out six days earlier. Nobody was holding their breath. There were flashlights. There were candles. In the daytime there was sunlight streaming through the cracks in the security shutters as well as through the few bullet holes in the roof.

Miles being shot the day before had something to do with these holes but Rudd hadn’t told Langston that part of it, nor had he been asked. It felt like cheating-Langston was blinded early on-but Langston knew he was blind. Rudd wondered if that meant Langston would be spared the visual if not the aural hallucinations of delirium tremens. The two men had discussed it and decided not, after all these were pictures of the mind. Still Rudd wasn’t sure. A chance to see again? They were indistinguishable from real sight. Surely Langston, whatever he was now seeing in his mind, wasn’t seeing anything like that. Rudd had said to him, “Maybe it’ll be a good thing,” and then they both had laughed.

So lost in his thoughts was Rudd that the sudden spray of automatic weapon fire against the west side of the building practically startled him off his step. He froze, listened, hoping that someone would handle it. A beat was followed by a second thirty-round clip, and Rudd could almost hear the release and click that filled that beat for the man who held the gun. Rudd didn’t know squat about fully automatic weapons or even where one would go to obtain one. He fingered his own Walther PPK/S tucked under his belt and was reassured by his command over it.